


Love and Madness and Time

by Mere_dyth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1938003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mere_dyth/pseuds/Mere_dyth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reality is our perception of the world around us.</p>
<p>Maybe how we see Peggy's experience of Steve's return isn't what we thought. The only opinion on it that matters is hers, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love and Madness and Time

**Author's Note:**

> Dementia has been playing a large role in my work and family life. A few photosets of that scene between Steve and Peggy in Cap 2 have been floating around Tumblr, and I started to think about our assumptions when watching it.
> 
> Today I reblogged another poignant photoset, and all my thoughts coalesced into this. I thought I'd share it.

 

Sometimes she realises she’s losing her mind.

Most days it didn’t matter. She remembered, or forgot, but before he came it was little things, and she was safe and loved, so when she did think on it and realise what was slipping away, thought ‘that’s life’.

And really, hers has been so good, so useful, how could she complain.

But now she knows, in no uncertain terms, that her mind is going. Because he’s sitting there, beside her bed, looking exactly as he did that fatal day so many years ago. When she dragged him into a kiss, wind whipping their hair into their eyes, and willed him to succeed, even as a part of her wanted to grab him and drag him back into that ridiculous car.

Still, she humours his ghost, this vision. He deserves that much, even if he is a figment of her failing brain cells. It’s funny, how she imagines him here, in this modern time. So out of place with his old-fashioned manners and still-awkward smile. How natural it feels to talk to him about how he could fit in here, make a difference. All the pieces of her life fit into this construct she’s built - SHIELD, her grand-niece, the most recent memories and most distant those that are clearest to her. How they weave together as her fantasy fabricates serious conversations on his life now, in this time. How glad he is to see her. How he still looks at her with that shy love and adoration.

It slips away from her, sometimes, and she forgets it’s just her own personal ghost - thinks maybe he’s really there. But then all the pain comes back, because in reality she knows he was lost. Never to be found. And it hurts her to see him hurt - reflection upon reflection of a timeless loss that she’s carried with her, locked away inside.

She’s had a good life. A worthwhile life. And maybe she found love, and career, and family (although never blessed or cursed or simply granted a child of their own). But he was special. 

Her Steve.

Today has been a good day. He sat beside her and they talked, they laughed. He looks tired, and a little lost, but maybe less lost than before. He tells her of his new friends (names and faces she knows she pulls from the files of her mind and the old records and maybe from some of those ghastly current affairs shows, before she stopped watching the television entirely. One reaches an age when the trials of the world can take care of themselves) and a little bit about his adventures.

And she sighs when he leaves, still feeling the imagined warmth of his hand on hers, his lips against her cheek. Young, fresh, smelling faintly of cologne as old as time.

There are worse ways to go, she thinks. Worse ways to lose your mind. The world turns and time with it, and she knows that her time is almost done.

How kind, then, that madness has gifted her with the chance to say all the things life didn’t. 

I missed you.

I lived, and loved, but you were never betrayed.

I love you.

 

****


End file.
